Josh Prost, Senior Director of Digital Marketing & Operations at Attivio is no stranger to account-based marketing. According to Josh, “We’ve always been doing account-based marketing; it’s just that now there’s an acronym for it.”
For Josh, ABM is all about executing campaigns and measuring results at the account level, not the lead or contact level, using a named account strategy.
Building Attivio’s ABM Tech Stack
Even before Attivio got started with the Terminus ABM platform, their sales and marketing teams knew exactly the types of companies and individuals they needed to target. Because they had already worked together to define their ideal customer profile, target accounts, and buyer personas, everyone was aligned around the same audience and goals. In order to market to and analyze data from those companies in a more dynamic way, Josh and his team began building out their ABM tech stack to include tools like Terminus.
Josh shared, “We already had Marketo, Salesforce, and a few other key tools like Optimizely, LinkedIn Navigator, and Oceanos. We added Bombora, ReachForce, RelPro, and Terminus to our stack.”
Adding ABM-specific tools like Terminus to their tech stack helped them transform their existing account-based marketing efforts into scalable, measurable campaigns.
Focusing on Account Engagement, Not Lead Generation
Attivio wanted to implement an ABM strategy that ensured they were laser-focused on generating awareness and engagement across the buying committee at their best-fit accounts — not simply generating leads.
According to Josh, “We never expected Terminus to be a lead gen engine. It’s about generating awareness and engagement in our target accounts. It’s a media buy that targets only the companies that we are focused on, which is not possible in traditional PPC or third-party media initiatives.”
Their highly targeted approach to advertising is what makes Attivio’s campaigns so effective.
“As we tested creative, we learned that the more targeted we got with specific Terminus campaigns and ad creative, the better results we saw,” said Josh. “And Terminus is very good at allowing you to be targeted in creative ways because you can configure so many different types of campaigns from data in your CRM.”
Executing Account-Based Marketing with Fit + Intent + Engagement
Using Terminus as their core platform, Attivio created dynamic advertising campaigns that allow accounts to flow in and out based on criteria from Salesforce. These campaigns were built around the Fit + Intent + Engagement model for ABM. Attivio starts by identifying accounts that fit their ideal customer profile. They find these accounts from three sources:
- Account lists agreed upon by marketing and sales
- Net-new, best-fit accounts identified through Oceanos
- Best-fit accounts that come in through inbound activities
These accounts are then passed through Bombora’s intent data software to see if they’re surging on one of their four main keywords. If an account is surging, it automatically moves into a unique Terminus campaign for that specific keyword. If an account is not surging, it goes into a more general Terminus tactic that doesn’t mention any specific keyword. Below is a diagram of Attivio’s account-based marketing workflow:
Using intent data along with account-based advertising is a key part of Attivio’s ABM strategy. “We share Bombora intent data with sales so they can see which of their accounts are surging and can focus on those companies,” Josh shared. “They know Terminus campaigns are running as air cover to support their outreach since Terminus is targeting them specifically. I think using Terminus and Bombora is great for sales because we can give them the intent data and then support their outreach through Terminus.”
Developing Keyword-Specific Ad Campaigns
Within each of their keyword-specific Terminus campaigns, Attivio has created different messaging and CTAs to test which one is most effective. Both the ads and the landing pages in each tactic mention the keyword the account was searching for, which ensures that the content is highly relevant to that account’s needs. Here are some examples of Attivio’s ad creative.
Measuring Success
Attivio’s main goal with these intent-based Terminus campaigns was to generate awareness and engagement within their target accounts to create more opportunities. To measure their success, they used Terminus’ ABM reports to look at website engagement and opportunity creation as their key metrics of success. They saw some pretty awesome results:
- 3X increase in total website visits AND unique visitors from target accounts
- 69% of all new sales opportunities were generated from accounts targeted by Terminus
Seeing results like this confirms that their account-based advertising efforts are working.
“Serving Terminus ads creates the awareness we need to help initiate conversations with the right companies,” said Josh.
Why Account-Based Advertising with Terminus Works for Attivio
Taking the time to plan out relevant, personalized messaging was a huge driver of the success of these Terminus campaigns.
“It’s important to understand how Terminus works and that it’s different than other advertising technology,” said Josh. “In order to get the full value from Terminus, you need to build campaigns with specific ads. You can’t just put up any ad and use Terminus to serve it. The more targeted you get, the better off you’ll be. Terminus is very good at allowing you to be targeted because you can create so many different types of campaigns from data in your CRM. You can cut it and splice it so many different ways. That’s how you segment, and that’s why you target.”
Being strategic in their Terminus campaigns definitely helped Attivio see success, but another key reason they saw such great results is that they weren’t bogged down with measuring the wrong metrics.
Josh shared, “I think a big pain point for many B2B marketers is the obsessions with leads, right? Instead, marketers need to focus on generating demand with the right accounts. Terminus helps you get more targeted and drive engagement in key accounts, which leads to more efficiency and better results from your marketing efforts.”
Click here to download a PDF version of Attivio’s ABM Story.
